Enoch Gib’s knowledge of human nature in the uses of business was deep
and exact. He was not mistaken in Aaron’s son. John Breakspeare could
sell iron rails. He could sell anything.
Selling ability in its highest development is a strange gift. There is
no accounting for it. One has it or one has it not. He had it in that
all-plus-X degree, which is the indefinite part of genius. The final
irony was that Gib should have discovered it, for it belonged to the
steel age and was destined to be turned against him. In this young
man who could sell iron rails he prepared a weapon for his invincible
adversary.
The steel age always knew in advance what it needed. Salesmanship
was its very breath. Why? Because when it came suddenly, like a
natural event, men found themselves in command of means for producing
wealth,--that is to say, goods, enormously beyond any scale of human
wants previously imaginable. Production attended to itself. It ran
utterly wild. There was a chronic excess of producing capacity because
the supply of steel had been magically increased one hundred fold and
steel was the basis of an endless profusion of new goods.
The dilemma that presented itself was unique. Its name was
over-production. It occurred simultaneously in Great Britain, Germany,
France and the United States. They all had the same goods to sell, the
very same goods, rising from steel, and they sold them to each other
in mad competition. Prices fell steadily for many years, continuously,
until goods were preposterously cheap, and always there was a surplus
still. Rails fell from $125 to $18 a ton, and the face of two
continents was netted with railways. Yet there was a surplus of rails.
Never before in the history of mankind did goods increase faster than
wants. It is not likely ever to happen again.
In a way that becomes clear with a little reflection, a surplus of
steel caused a surplus of nearly everything else--food to begin with.
There was a great surplus of food because steel rails opened suddenly
to the world the virgin lands of the American west. The iron age had
foreshortened time and distance. The steel age annihilated them.
It made no difference how far a thing was hauled. Transportation was
cheap because steel was cheap. Kansas wheat was sold in Minneapolis,
Chicago and in Liverpool. Minneapolis made flour and sent it to New
York, Europe and back to Kansas.
The great availability of food released people from agriculture. They
went to the industrial centers to make more steel and things rising of
steel, so that there were more of such goods to sell.
_More, more, more_ of everything.
_Sell! Sell! Sell!_
That was the voice of the steel age.
But we overrun the thread of the story. It lies still in the iron age.
How did John Breakspeare sell iron rails for Enoch?
It is to be mentioned that he founded the art of Messianic advertising.
He took the message of iron rails to the people. He dramatized the
subject.
After four weeks of study and reflection, going to and fro in the mill,
absorbing all the technical literature there was, acquainting himself
with the way of the trade,--Gib watching and letting him alone,--he
outlined a plan of campaign. It involved a considerable outlay of
money. Gib approved it nevertheless and the young evangel set forth.
At Philadelphia he arranged an exhibit the first feature of which was a
pair of New Damascus iron rails that had bridged a perilous gap twelve
feet wide and twelve feet deep washed out under a railway track at
night. A locomotive and six passenger cars passed safely over those
rails in the dark. The miracle was discovered the next morning. Steel
rails under that strain would have snapped. This was very effective.
He reproduced in public the breaking tests applied to steel and iron
rails alternately in the New Damascus mill yard. He collected data
on railway accidents, which were then numerous and terrifying, and
published regularly in the newspapers a cumulative record of those that
were caused by the failure of imported steel rails, at the same time
offering $10,000 for proof of the failure of a New Damascus iron rail
under any conditions. He handled his facts in a sensational manner.
Public sentiment was aroused. In several state legislatures bills were
introduced requiring all new railway mileage to be laid with iron rails
and all steel rails in use to be replaced with iron. None of these
bills was passed. Still, they were useful for purposes of propaganda.
A Committee of Congress made an extensive inquiry at which the young
Elias from New Damascus appeared and made a worthy impression. This was
the beginning of his familiarity with the lawmaking mentality. Without
asking for it directly he got what the iron people had prayed for in
vain. That was a punitive tariff against foreign steel rails. He had
moved public opinion; the rest was automatic.
Thus he sold first the idea of iron rails. Next he proceeded to sell
the rails.
Railway building at that time was the enchanted field of creative
speculation. Railways were made in hope, rejoicing and sheer abandon
of wilful energy. Once they were made they served economic ends, as a
navigable waterway will, no matter where or how it goes, but for one
that was intelligently planned for the greatest good of the greatest
need four or five others derived their existence fantastically from
motives of emulation, spite, greed, combat and civic vaingloriousness.
When in the course of events all these separate translations of
the ungoverned imagination were linked up the result was that
incomprehensible crazy quilt which the great American railway system
was and is in the geographical sense. It was more exciting and more
profitable to build railways than wagon roads. That is how we came to
have the finest railways and the worst highways of any country in the
civilized world.
Into this field of sunshine and quicksand marched the young man from
New Damascus. He could scent a new railway project from afar, up or
down wind, and then he stalked it day and night. He sold it the rails.
Without fail he furnished the rails. He sold them for cash when he
could, and when he couldn’t get cash he took promissory notes, I O U’s,
post-dated checks, bonds and stocks. He took all he could get of what
he could find, but whatever it was he sold the rails.
Enoch Gib, greatly startled at first, was willing to see how
merchandising by this principle would work out. But as he was unused
to excursions in finance and as the notes and stocks and bonds of
railways in the gristle piled up in his safe he called in his banker
for consultation. John was present.
“It’s not so much of a gamble if you go far enough,” said John.
“There’s a principle of insurance in it. It would be risky to sell
insurance on one ship. Nobody does that. It is perfectly safe to sell
insurance on a thousand ships. This is the same thing. Some of these
railways will bust of course. But if we sell rails to all of them we
can afford to lose on the few that go down. The whole question is: do
you believe in railways?”
The two old men looked at their youthful instructor with anxious wonder.
“Is that your own idea?” the banker asked.
“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” John answered.
“When you mention it, yes,” said the banker. “I should never have
thought of it that way.”
Later the banker spoke privately with Gib.
“That’s a very dangerous young man.”
“Very,” said Gib.
Yet it worked out rather well, owing partly to the principle and partly
to John’s uncanny instinct for making a safe leap. He could smell
bankruptcy before it happened. Moving about as he did continually in
the surge of the railway excitement he had access to much private
information. He knew pretty well how it fared with the companies that
owed the mill for rails. If one were verging toward trouble he knew how
and where to get rid of its paper at a discount. There were losses; but
the losses were balanced by profits in those cases where a company that
had been charged a very high price for rails because it was short of
cash and nobody else would take its notes was able at length to redeem
its paper in full.
In John’s mind was no thought of either loyalty to iron or disloyalty
to steel. It was a question of American rails against foreign rails.
Steel rails were entirely of foreign origin. The steel age had not
crossed the ocean. His work justified itself. It was immediately
creative and greatly assisted railway building. It was speculative
also, and this is to be remembered. A collateral and very important
result was that it hastened the advent of the American steel rail,
since the punitive tariff against foreign rails gave the American steel
people the incentive of greater profit. That presently changed the
problem.
Meanwhile, never had the New Damascus mill been so active. Never had
its profits been greater. Yet Enoch Gib was uneasy. He had offered the
young man a partnership. John had flatly declined it.
What did that mean?